Reader Don in Los Angeles County wrote recently with a question about a well-known grammar issue called a “split infinitive.” “I learned about them 50 years ago and I am somewhat sensitive about them ...

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW was once so angry with a subeditor that he complained to the newspaper. “I ask you, sir,” Shaw wrote, “to put this man out.” The cause of his fury? The editor had insisted on ...

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here. In the course of drafting his story, Chandler was no less annoyed by ...

An "infinitive" in English is a verb preceded by the word to, as in to study. Many English verbs can be followed by a grammatical structure that contains an infinitive and is known as an "infinitive ...